campaign

Pronunciation

• IPA: /kæmˈpeɪn/^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French campagne (“campaign; open country”),^[2][3][4] from Italian campagna (“countryside; military operation”), or from Old North French or Old Provençal,^[3][4][5] from Late Latin campānia (“level country, open country, battlefield”),^[2][4][3] from Latin campus (“plain, field”).^[2][3] Merriam-Webster links Late Latin campānia to the name of Campania, the level country around Naples.^[5] It is a doublet of champaign and closely related to French champagne, both the open country and the wine region.^[3][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A tract of open country: 1628,^[7][5] a sense now obsolete; the Latin form campania was used in English in 1591 and 1598.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Old armies spent the winter in quarters in towns and garrisons and took to the open field in summer to seek battle, so the word for the countryside came to mean the operations of an army in the field for one season,^[2][6][3] from 1647^[3] or the 1640s.^[2] The sense was generalized to any sustained course of action for a purpose by 1770^[3][7] or 1790,^[2] and in the United States to political activity before an election by 1809.^[3][2] A period of continuous operation of a furnace is from 1871.^[7] The verb, “to serve in a campaign”, is from 1701,^[3][2] and its political sense from 1801.^[2]

Timeline

• 1591 – the Latin form campania, open country.^[3]
• 1628 – open country.^[7]
• 1647 – a military campaign.^[3]
• 1701 – verb, to serve in a campaign.^[3][2]
• 1770 – any organized course of action.^[3]
• 1801 – verb, political sense.^[2]
• 1809 – an election campaign.^[3][2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A series of military operations in a war with a particular aim.
2. An organized series of actions to achieve a goal, such as winning an election or changing opinion.
3. (obsolete) Open country.

Verb

1. To take part in a campaign, especially for political office or a cause.

Word family

• campaigner
• countercampaign
• precampaign
• recampaign
• campaign button
• campaign hat
• smear campaign
• whispering campaign

Related words

• camp
• campus
• champion
• champaign
• champagne
• scamper
• decamp

Usage notes

Campaign, crusade, drive and push all denote a vigorous, concerted effort to achieve a purpose: a fund-raising campaign, a drive to sell bonds.^[8]

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2000), 4th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin
5. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin